'Sexy Bitch' Michael Ian Black Bares All on Reddit

Reddit users tossed a series of fun questions at Black — co-author of the new America, You Sexy Bitch book with Meghan McCain, co-host of Mike and Tom Eat Snackspodcast and character on Yahoo's Burning Love web series.

BillDinghy: I always wanted to be a C list celebrity. Any advice on getting my foot in the door? How does it feel to be less famous than Daniel "Douchebag" Tosh?

Let me tell you, the life of a C list celebrity is pretty sweet. If I want to go to an Applebee's, all I have to do is, literally, walk in the door. They seat me AS SOON AS the other people ahead of me are seated. So yeah, pretty awesome. To get your foot in the door: find a door, stick that foot right on in there.

unequalized: How did your roadtrip/book project with Meghan McCain come about? Is she as down-to-earth and not-as-nuts-as-her-last-name-implies as she comes across on Twitter? Also, since you were part of MTV in the '90s, what's your take on the shitshow it has become now?

One night, I was on Ambien and got on Twitter. Saw that she was on too, and asked her if she wanted to write a book together. (We'd only met, one time, over satellite.) So we didn't know each other before we agreed to write America, You Sexy Bitch. We just decided to do it on a whim and hit the road together for a month. And yes, she is both as down-to-earth and crazy as you would think.

andrewsmith1986: If you had to pit two people against each other in a monkey knife fight, who would you pick?

This is a stupid question: if it's a monkey knife fight, it would be monkeys fighting with knives, not people fighting with monkey knives. So if you're asking which monkeys I would pick, probably a couple of chimps or maybe a chimp and a silverback.

bulliestogo: How closely do you follow politics, what did you learn in writing the book and what does America need at this point?

I follow politics pretty closely for a civilian. I learned a lot while writing America, You Sexy Bitch. Mostly that our system is fucked. The problem, as I (and many, many others) see it, is that the bedrock of our system, representative democracy, has become so corrupted with money that we are slipping from being a democratic nation into being a corporatized nation. Corporations do a lot of things well, but not run nations, for obvious reasons. The first thing we need to do, above all else, is somehow disentangle money from our political process, at least to the extent that a few loud voices are drowning millions of softer voices. How do we do this? I don't know. But Citizens United and the like aren't helping.

robmandark: If you were asked to contribute a guest verse for any rapper who would it be and what would the first line be?

I would go with Vanilla Ice: Yo, Ice, let's sing this. I'm gonna melt with you, Like Modern English.

geneveve: Between movies, TV, books and podcasts, what medium do you enjoy working on the most?

I'm least known for this, but probably my radical feminist poetry.

arsenaldb: I'd just like to say that your father's day story on This American Life was one of the most moving stories I've ever experienced and resulted in me calling my dad sobbing at 6 in the morning. How difficult was it to perform this story and how were you approached by TAL?

Thank you. I really appreciate that. It was kind of tough to perform because I'd never read that out loud before. I kind of knew Ira through a mutual friend, Mike Birbiglia, and he asked to read an early draft of my book, which I showed him. From that he asked me to do the piece for TAL.

BHutt: How much of Mike and Tom Eat Snacks is scripted? You and Tom seem to go on such wildly coordinated tangents that are equal parts hilarious and bizarre. Anyway, big fan of all your work and just finished your book about two weeks ago.

Scripted: zero. We just turn on the little recording machine and start talking. So glad you like it, Matey.

sburn: My friend and I find you insanely attractive. Good on ya Michael.

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